CONTEMPORARY EXHIBITS 2006-07

April 1, 2008

In this last session of the course we reviewed the categories into which contemporary art could be placed, despite the claim of the artists that there are no categories since the 1960's, and that all styles are equally acceptable. The categories with which we have been looking at art this semester indicate the intent of the artist. All art is "message" art, in that art is a visual language that communicates. Some artists want to give the viewers social and/or political messages, often as representatives of minority groups that have been "invisible" in the culture. Others, experiment with different materials to expand experimental possibilities. Still others communicate aesthetically, with color, line, space, texture, light, and gravity.

We looked, first, at minority artists such as the African American woman, Adrian

Piper, and the African American man, David Hammons. We then looked at Jimmie Durham, a Native American, and John Coplans who photographed his own aging for a culture that "hates old people". We looked also at Eleanor Dickinson's book of line drawings showing intimate relations between aging people. The controversial artist, Mapplethorpe showed male homosexuality.

Cindy Sherman, who photographed herself while making comments about society, and Barbara Kruger, who used texts and images in an advertisement style, are contemporary message artists. Wayne Thiebaud, however, was primarily concerned with paint and texture, but more recently turned to aerial views that showed patterns and colors. Jay deFeo sculpted through thick paint as in her huge work, The Rose.

Looking at recent exhibits we mentioned the Brooklyn Museum's Elizabeth A.Sackler Center for Feminist Art that opened in 2007 with Judy Chicago's Dinner Party as a centerpiece, and "WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution that went from L.A. to P.S. 1 in Queens, New York. We then looked at works from 3 exhibits at the remodelled San Diego Museum of Art: Morris Louis, Richard Serra, and Ernesto Neto. The Berkeley Art Museum had an exhibit of Bruce Nauman's work of sculptured space and of Allen Ruppersberg's installation of texts from Ginsberg's "Howl" embedded in posters, ads, and signs. Gregg Renfrow's color paintings embued with light were at a S.F. Gallery.

The S.F. Moma showed Brice Marden's color paintings that played with changing light, and his calligraphic paintings of lines dancing on the canvas. We also looked at Hundley's works which were whole scenarios that he created out of a variety of materials. Two artists who dealt with Abu Ghraib were also on exhibit last year: Clinton Fein, who staged copies of photographs and then photographed them, and Fernando Botero who drew and painted, robust figured perpetrators and victims, showing strength and power. Tara Donovan's movable sculpture, made of sawed off pencils, showed how art seen from different perspectives has different meanings. And, finally we looked at Tony Oursler's work that merged video with sculpture and sound.

The last part of the session was devoted to the artists in the class who brought in some of their own work to share. The variety of styles and media was perhaps the best demonstration of the Post Modern art world. Thanks to all who brought in their work.

POST MODERN ART Continued

March 26, 2008

The fifth session of the course took us from the 1950's to the present. We looked first at the work of Richard Serra- his large, weighty pieces that tended to dwarf viewers and make them feel vulnerable to the repression and restrictions of the government. His work, and that of other conceptual artists, were gathered in the Dia Beacon Museum in Beacon, N.Y., the creation of Michael Govan, who is now the director of the L.A. County Museum.

We next looked at the Feminist Movement's second wave that focused on social rights denied women, and their lack of representation in museums and galleries. Judy Chicago was especially influential, launching a Feminist Art Program and creating, with Nancy Spero, "The Dinner Party" ,between 1973 and 1979. This controversial piece consisted of 39 table settings with symbols of mythologically or historically famous women, and plates that had vaginal imagery. Other women artists, such as Eleanor Antin, Hannah

Wilkes and Carolee Schneeman performed and videotaped their erotic performances

that were meant to convey political and social messages about power and its source.

Louise Bourgeois, another feminist artist said that her art expresses her challenge to find a means of getting along with other people, which was the central problem of her life.

Her most famous works are her spider sculptures, some of which were named,"Maman".

At the same time message art about nature was gaining in popularity. This art, like Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" was based on "real time" and required the viewer to be there and walk around it. Called Earth Art, it made the landscape the very substance of the art. Some of these process artists placed their work inside a museum, rather than in the natural environment and often used materials that changed their form. Earth Art continued into the 21st. Century with Christo and Jean Claude wrapping the Kunstalle in Bern, Switzerland, wrapping the cliff lined shore in Australia, constructing the running fence in Sonoma and Marin counties and erecting the Gates in Central Park, N.Y. They claimed their art had no messge and never obscured nature, it only enhanced nature's beauty. Another Earth Artist is Robert Irwin who created works with light and space in the Museum of Modern Art in N.Y., the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Dia Beacon, the garden for the new Getty Museum in L.A., and most recently for the new BCAM addition to LACMA in L.A. Also well known to us are Andy Goldsworthy and James Turrell who both have installations in the deYoung Museum in San Francisco and work with nature and light, and the changing environment.

We then looked at artists who were called the New Imagists, who returned painting to the canvas and painted recognizable images, albeit in a less polished style. They were criticized as crude and primitive and reactionary. Philip Guston, Susan Rothenberg, and Jonathan Borofsky were typical of this style. Another group was called Neo Expressionists and that included the Amerians Julian Schnabel, David Salle and Eric Fischl, and the Europeans Francesco Clemente, Sigmar Plke, Gerhart Richter, Georg Baselitz, and Anselm Kiefer. These painters were more daring than the earlier Expressionists and focused not only on the expression of feelings but also on the social and cultural pressures in their countries, conveying social and political messages along with their own feelings. They also experimented with a wide range of materials that hadn't been used on canvases before. Kiefer and Baselitz painted more expressive pictures than did Richter and Polke ,but all broke into new territories for art: Schnabel put broken pottery on his canvases, Polke used chemicals, and even rat poison, some of which made his canvases change over time. Richter simulated photography and used, primarily, greys and whites for a deliberately neutral effect. Kiefer used mud and junk and metal on his canvases and exaggerated depth perception. He portrayed the older culture and the myths of German history in an attempt to revitalize German Idealism. Baselitz's portraits of peasants, herdsmen and hunters were presented upside down as a metaphor for a topsy-turvy world.

The 1980's and 90's were eras in which minority groups were given more recognition in our society. The Feminist movement shifted their focus from the innate feminine nature to the language in our culture that promotes male domination. Gay and Lesbian artists were given museum exhibits and Latin American artists produced street murals to voice their messages. In the late 70's and up until 1988, Jean Michel Basquiat, in an effort to bring art back to the people, revived a sort of primitivism and promoted graffiti art. His art became as popular as that of Clemente and Schnabel, until his death from an overdose of heroin. No style of art is predominant today. The category loosely labeled "Art" is almost Amoeba-like; it can be stretched in many directions, allowing for all varieties of expression.

Next week we'll look some of the current art being shown in museums and galleries. And those students who wish to, will share their own art work with the class.

Correction

Correction: "Decenturing" is not a word (a blog reader alerted me to this which is posted in the comments). Apologies to all for the misspelling. "Decentering" it should be. And thanks to any and all who read the blog.

THE POSTMODERN ERA BEGINS

March 11, 2008

Postmodern Art is seen as starting in the 60's as part of the cultural revolution that was taking place. The new thinking was based on the Philosophies of Derrida and Foucault ,and was known as Deconstructionism. It was being taught in University Philosophy and Literature Depts. Derrida believed that all the world was a text and that language had hidden meanings that could be uncovered if we looked at opposites of words used and for words not used . Foucault focused on the categories we build with our language that include/exclude and how these limit our thinking. He looked at the power sources that determined what was allowed in our categories.

These are oversimplifies and condensed descriptions but these theories stimulated people to think in terms of inclusion/exclusion in our society and they rebelled against single theories of Marx, Freud, Einstein, Clement Greenberg, who built "grand narratives" that locked in our thinking . There was a clamoring for inclusion of minority groups: racial, ethnic, gender, into the mainstream of American culture- a decenturing in our culture.

In addition there was a new focus in Psychology that developed from Existential Philosophy and became known as Humanistic Psychology. The emphasis was on finding the authentic person under the overlays of society's rules and regulations, categories and language. This gave impetus to the "do your own thing" culture, and where better to express yourself than in the arts? In addition, the Vietnam war, seen as immoral and unnecessary fanned the flames of protests and demands for inclusion of all groups in decision making in contemporary society.

In art the revolt was against exclusive styles of art with their own rules and regulations, and artists, beginning with the Pop Artists of the 50's, brought art to the people in the form of message art presented with their own bodies in performance, or installed outdoors or indoors, or painted compilations of symbols of every day life. Much of this was criticized as "Kitsch" such as Kienholz's decaying cars and houses, Jenny Holzer's electronic billboards flashing messages, Baldessari's use of ordinary objects, and Elizabeth Murray's inclusion of kitchen items . Some were taken more seriously because of their breakthroughs with new material, their witty uses of their own bodies as well as found objects, and the social messages their art expressed. Eva Hesse and Bruce Nauman are prime examples, as was Gilbert and George who made huge photographic pieces satirizing institutions, and glorifying the commonality of man that included photos of their own "living sculpture".

We ended the session with Nam June Paik, the video artist, who worked with electronic musicians and technicians to create imaginative art that commented on our culture on videos and with videos and spawned a whole generation of artists who experimented with video and electronic art.

These artists went further than the Modern artists in individual expression without stylistic rules --sometimes too far, in that they lost contact with the art audience. The sixties started a chaotic era that is still with us. It broke boundaries of all kinds and allowed for the use of multi-media and seemingly never ending inventions. Blake said, "How do we know what's far enough, until we have gone too far". We probably will never go back to the era of art gurus and will create new venues for showing non-museum style art, but we don't know yet if we have gone "too far" in the past 40+years. In the meantime, artists have continued to explore and break boundaries and we'll follow those decades in the next two weeks.

MODERN ART IN THE 40'S AND 50'S

March 11, 2008
In our last session I talked about the continuum in experience from largely intellectual aspects to largely aesthetic aspects. All experiences have both, somewhere along the continuum. It's good to recognize both in all of our experiences, and question our own balance.
We then looked at parallel developments in Music and Literature, citing Schoenberg, Webern, Stravinsky as musicians who changed the established concept of musical keys. The riot in the concert hall when Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was played for the first time took place in 1913, the very same year in which the viewers of the Armory show in which Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase was shown, rioted. Parallel changes were also taking place in literature with James Joyce changing the established rules of language use and compressing time into one day. Dostoevsky also compressed time and Ambrose Bierce described only one second in a man's life. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells projected into future time and Proust brought past time to the present. Radical changes were taking place in all of the arts.
We then looked at the Post WWII American artists who, once freed from the dominance of European Art, made Expressionist art more and more abstract. The main guru of this period was Clement Greenberg who believed that art should have aesthetic principles to which all artists adhered. Principle among these principles were the flat canvas (no depth nor perspective) and a focus on the "painterly" aspects of a painting: line, color, shape, texture, rather than on objects, scenery, or stories. Once all objects were removed the art became more and more abstract. The main artists of this period were Pollock, Motherwell, Clyfford Stills, Barnett Newman and the color field painters: Morris Louis, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell and Yves Klein. Mark Rothko represented color field painting at its height. After this period painting became more and more abstract, as in the works of Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella and Ad Reinhardt until they so distanced themselves from the viewer, in the period of Minimalism, that a reaction set in.
The reaction was introduced by the works of Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, both of whom were said to have bridged the periods of Minimalism and Pop Art. These artists wanted to bring the world of common objects into their pictures and so began the tradition of "combines" and collages, and conceptual art. The Pop Artists who followed them were Warhol, Lichtenstein, Claus Oldenberg, Baldessari and Jeff Coons, among others. Much of their work were critical and/or satirical representations of the popular culture of the day.
Artists in this period, such as David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Diebenkorn and Oliviera, in California, revived the painting of figures in a style known as Naive Figurative Painting. Later proponents of this style were Manuel Neri and Joan Brown.
Next week we'll look at some artists whose work could not be easily categorized, and then go on to the 60's revolution in the arts.

Early Modern Art

March 3, 2008

Before continuing with the artists of the Early Modern period, I addressed a question about "naive" and "folk art" and children's art. While some people paint in the style of "folk art" because it is part of their culture and all that they have been exposed to, others might paint that way because they are not trained in art and paint the world as it appears to them. Still others might make a deliberate choice to use a "folk art" style because it fits the "message" they are trying to deliver. The selection of a style of art depends upon a number of factors: exposure to alternative styles, a genetic component of physical visual acuity and talent, resources available, and the artist's values and intent.

The question of children's art came up and I spoke about the film about the child who became famous for her abstract paintings until there was an expose about "coaching" by the father. In the film the child had been compared to Pollock who was said to have splashed his paint expressively on the canvas. The difference, however, is that Pollock had art training, was exposed to many styles of art and experimented with many, before deliberately choosing his style for his particular purposes. The film represented exploitation of the child every step of the way in her short career.

We then went back to the survey of the styles of art that were popular at the end of the 19th Century and beginning of the 20th Century. Our focus is on the concept of "styles" in art - ways of doing art that have different prominent values and rules for presenting them. It is only by understanding the main intents of each style, and their restrictive rules, will we be able to understand Post-Modern/Contemporary art.

We looked next at the colorists Gaugin, Van Gogh, Seurat, Matisse and the Fauvists, and Kandinsky, all of whom believed that color delivered its own message of emotions and was more important than objects or any representation of reality. Next we looked at the Cubists and their contributions to perceptual awareness with their representations of shapes looked at from many perspectives at one time. And then at the Futurists who represented time now and in the future with paintings and constructions. As art became more and more absurd, two other styles developed: Dada and Surrealism. Dada attempted to return to the innocence of children at play and Surrealists depicted a dream world of incongruities and exaggerations to increase our awareness .

While these artists were concerned with space and time and color and perception, another group was concerned with the ordinary lives of people in actual places. Robert Henri influenced artists for forty years, who showed "real life" including the "seamy side" . His students included Edward Hopper, Ben Shahn and John Sloan. In Mexico, the muralists were painting their messages in public buildings and did so in the U.S. with more or less success. Rivera and Siqueros were not accepted here because of their radical social depictions, but Orozco was able to complete his murals in Dartmouth.

The paintings of the early twentieth century were in keeping with the changes that developed in music and in literature. Next week we'll start by looking at this cultural milieu and then go on to Modern Art after WW II.

POSTSCRIPT

February 26, 2008

I was asked to post a summary of what I described as the method of philosophy, that I said can be followed when inquiring into any aspects of our societies.

Here it is:
1) Collect data concerning all of the alternative approaches used in the subject of your inquiry. See WHAT is done and HOW it is done. (e.g. What do Behaviorists, Freudian Psychoanalysts, Jungian Psychoanalysts, Humanistic Psychologists, Cognitive Psychologists..., DO? HOW do they do it?)

2) Ask WHY they do what they do. This should take you to the concept/generalizations/laws/rules/principles (reasons why) of their theories.

3) Ask now what the major assumptions of their different theories are? (What do they assume about man/society/reality...?). And ask what it is they value in choosing the theories that they do. This should reveal the desired goals/ends
of that theory (#2) and that practice (#1).

In our inquiry into Art we look at the different practices and methods of the artists - individually, or in groups (styles). Then we ask Why they practice their art in that form to find what rules/principles they believe . And we then look at what they assume Art "Is" and what is important to them to achieve (values).

While no one will be tested on this method, it may help you to ask questions about the Art you see.